Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The idea behind the jobs bill is simple - suspend payroll taxes on new employees and give tax breaks to companies that make new hires before December. But there's a contradiction in here for both sides of the political aisle, and it is this: Liberals have long argued that higher taxes don't affect employment much, yet are touting a break from taxes as a big job-creator. Conservatives have argued that lower taxes create jobs, but are arguing against a tax break for new hires on the grounds that it will not do anything.

What. The. Hell?

Oh, and here's a fun fact - the cloture motion on the jobs bill passed 62-30. The bill itself passed 70-28. Doesn't the vote usually go the other way - people are willing to let the Senate vote on it but want to vote against it themselves? What's the rationale behind trying to block a bill but then voting for it?

Monday, February 22, 2010

Remember that guy who was going to blow up the New York subway system last year? Well, despite the fact that conservatives would definitely claim that we will all die horrible deaths at the hands of brown bearded people since we didn't throw him in Gitmo immediately, he was arrested, Mirandized, given a lawyer, and has now pled guilty to terrorism-related charges.

But of course, there's no way to get terrorists to cooperate with the government without tortureenhanced interrogation, right? Ummm...

The terms of the plea deal were sealed. A government source told CNN that the threat of legal action against Zazi's associates and family played a role in his decision to cooperate with the government.

Oh, so the legal system actually helped get him to plead guilty? OK, but I bet there's no way we could get useful information out of him without shredding the Constitution...

"This attempted attack on our homeland was real," U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said at a news conference praising the criminal justice system in foiling the plot. "It was in motion, and it would have been deadly."

He said "there is no doubt that American lives were saved" as a result of the investigation, adding that the case is "further evidence that al Qaeda continues to plan attacks on the United States."

Federal officials have said the conspiracy involving Zazi represents the most serious terrorism plot since 9/11, and the investigation is intense and ongoing.

Since Zazi's arrest last year, two of his acquaintances have been indicted in the case, as well as Zazi's father and uncle.Zazi's father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, initially was charged with lying to investigators, but in January a federal grand jury in New York charged him with conspiracy to obstruct justice by helping to discard bomb-making chemicals when he learned of the government's investigation.

Najibullah Zazi's uncle, Naqib Jaji, was indicted on a single felony charge and was arraigned in a sealed proceeding in Brooklyn, New York, in January. The charge wasn't specified, but a source said the uncle participated in the attempt to dispose of evidence.

So our prosecution of Zazi led to other terrorists being discovered and arrested? Hmmm... got anything to say, Nelson?

Yes, CSM, the Internet is too free. Let's just go full-China and censor everything you don't like because a few pranksters got a hold of an online petition and you're fucking embarrassed for the petitioners. Schmucks.

Bonus: the article contains this clunker of a line:

One hopes that in 1789, when anonymity was a little harder to come by in a live constitutional assembly, Americans were more polite to one another – or at least, more respectful.

Seriously, has whoever wrote this POS article ever read the kinds of shit the founders said about each other? Or hell, has she (I'm assuming "Tracy Samuelson" is a woman here) ever heard of Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton?

I have little or nothing to say about the attack in Austin, other than that I have no idea why the crazies have all come out to play recently. There are lots of responses on the Internet. Go read those.

We can’t just play defense in this fight. What Yglesias fails to understand is that the ideology Stack subscribed to is the problem. All across the country are sleeper cells preaching hatred of the tax code, gathering in public to denounce the results of a democratic election and sow the seeds of sectarian violence. They even have a major television network sympathetic to their sick agenda. The threat is there for all to see.

The proper response is to go on offense. Intelligence is crucial to anticipatory self-defense, so we must authorize the use of enhanced interrogation methods to break their determined resistance. Similarly, we need to authorize lawful methods of widespread data collection, known as the Teabagger Surveillance Program, to enable us to gather the dots necessary for putting together the puzzles of future attacks. Working with our partner intelligence agencies overseas, we will rely on humane but tough methods employed by our partner agencies in more appropriate legal environments. The gloves are off.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Sometimes, the comedy writes itself. For this edition of Amateur Hour, we'll turn it over to former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell:

What we are witnessing right now is an anti-Christian programmatic pogrom. What is a “pogrom” it’s the word [sic] that describes anti-Jewish raids by Cossacks and others in czarist Russia, but a programmatic pogrom best describes what is happening right now.

Because not bowing to the Christian theocratic agenda is the equivalent of slaughtering thousands of innocent Jews and driving the rest from their homes. What amuses me is that he actually gives a nod to the historical context of his word even while making a ridiculous comparison to a completely dissimilar event.

And the things that constitute the "anti-Christian programmatic pogrom"? Why, the nominations of Dawn Johnsen and Chai Feldblum to the OLC and EEOC respectively, of course! Fun twist on this story: Feldblum is Jewish. So not only is Blackwell completely abusing the word "pogrom," he's doing so while accusing a Jew as being part of its perpetration.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

From just down Highway 1 in Apex comes this bizarre story about a teacher who is now threatened with firing after complaining about and mocking her students on Facebook. The idea that this is a firing offense is ridiculous on its face - she's surely not the first middle-school teacher to complain about or make fun of her students. While doing so publicly is probably worthy of reprimand, expecting a teacher not to do so on pain of unemployment in this day and age is pure foolishness.

But what makes the story truly interesting is why she was complaining:

Parents said the situation escalated after a student put a postcard of Jesus on Hussain's desk that the teacher threw in the trash. Parents also said [the teacher, Melissa] Hussain sent to the office students who, during a lesson about evolution, asked about the role of God in creation.

On her Facebook page, Hussain wrote about students spreading rumors that she was a Jesus hater. She complained about her students wearing Jesus T-shirts and singing "Jesus Loves Me." She objected to students reading the Bible instead of doing class work.

(snip)

The flash point for the comments came after the Bible was left on Hussain's desk in December. The Bible was accompanied by an anonymous card, which, according to Hussain, said "Merry Christmas" with Christ underlined and bolded. She said there was no love shown in giving her the Bible.

"I can't believe the cruelty and ignorance of people sometimes," Hussain wrote on her Facebook page.

Hussain also said she wouldn't let the Bible incident "go unpunished."

It appears that the students were proselytizing Ms. Hussain, and that she reacted badly to it. There are a few questions here:

1) Is it appropriate for students to attempt to proselytize their teacher?

2) Where is the line between proselytizing and harassment?

The former is the easier question to answer, though it's hardly clear-cut. I've written previously about the centrality of "going and making disciples" to Christianity as regards Brit Hume's attempts to convert Tiger Woods via newscast. Clearly a teacher proselytizing students would be inappropriate due to the power differential, and clearly a school administrator trying to proselytize a teacher would be unacceptable for the same reason. Since parents have influence over school administration and thus have some perceived authority over teachers, parents proselytizing teachers would make me uncomfortable. But students? Unless the students complained to the administrators about their witnessing efforts being rebuffed, and unless the students complained to their parents who in turn brought it up with administrators, I don't think intimidation by power differential is really in play here. I have no reason to believe that parents or administrators participated in pressuring the teacher to accept Christianity - rather, it seems that students were clearly taking the lead here. So while trying to convert your teacher might be unwise (of course, who expected wisdom out of middle schoolers?), it's hardly inappropriate, and I can't get too mad about it in principle.

The second question is a tough one. Did the students' behavior cross the line from proselytizing - which I believe is acceptable in principle - to harassment? I believe that it did, for a couple of reasons. First, the students conducted their activities in an oblique, anonymous manner. They made no attempt to engage Ms. Hussain directly - rather, they left little "you should convert" hints. Such anonymous hints are not witnessing because they do not make people engage and confront Christianity - rather, their intent is to make someone feel shame for not being Christian, which is harassment. Second, instead of respecting Ms. Hussain's desire not to be witnessed to, they instead escalated the situation and redoubled their efforts. That's clearly harassment. Third, we have to take Ms. Hussain's claims that the students were spreading malicious "Jesus-hater" rumors seriously - if this was, indeed, occurring, it reveals that the students were not trying to save Ms. Hussain's soul but rather to enforce conformity upon a non-conforming member of the community, and were thus harassing and not proselytizing.

Had the students in question merely approached Ms. Hussain and proselytized her respectfully and directly, her reactions would be an extreme overreaction, and she would indeed deserve disciplinary action for that. But that's not what's going on here - Ms. Hussain reacted like one would expect a young, relatively inexperienced teacher to react when faced with harassment by her middle-school charges.

Tangentially related song that I just wanted to post because it's awesome:

Monday, February 15, 2010

Remember all those breathless accusations that Obama was endangering Americans by giving Captain Underpants a criminal trial? That we were sacrificing valuable intelligence by letting him "lawyer up," as conservatives so enjoy saying?

Well, a report by Eli Lake, quoted here by Steve Benen, demonstrates that it's all bullshit.

As it turns out, the fact that we're putting Captain Underpants through the judicial system encouraged his family to get involved, and they've helped get useful information out of Abdulmutallab that can be use to fight terrorist networks overseas. And if Abdulmutallab had been labeled an "enemy combatant" and thrown in "indefinite detention," none of that would have happened.

Polls demonstrating the stupidity of most people aren't anything new, but sometimes you see a poll that just makes you question whether this whole "democracy" thing is all it's cracked up to be. This British poll showing that a majority of women believe that women should take responsibility for being raped is one such poll.

Now there are huge issues with this poll. One, it's an online survey, so it's probably somewhat unscientific. Two, the BBC article didn't give full crosstabs, so we're left with their interpretation of the numbers and have little way of finding out the actual questions. But even accounting for those factors, it's still disturbing that a large percentage of women would believe that it's the rape victim's fault that they were raped. In other words, a significant portion of the online population believes that a woman loses her right to say no when she either a) gets into bed with someone or b) dresses provocatively.

It ought to go without saying that a woman has the right to say no whenever she wants to, whether she's (mostly) fully clothed or in bed with someone or making out with someone or whatever... but apparently it doesn't for some people.

In other news...

Via Yorkshire at CSPT, there's an interesting new study out questioning the accuracy of weather stations' temperature readings as they pertain to global warming. The idea is that the weather stations can be subject to urban heat island effects that would distort the numbers. (Or they could have just plain been moved in order to get more desirable data - I seem to recall that this was the case in San Francisco, which moved its weather station to the warm Mission District so as to minimize the number of days when SF was forced to report "60 and foggy" in the middle of summer. That's an extreme case that owes its existence to SF's bizarre geography, but you get the idea.)

The evidence for global warming goes well beyond temperature readings, of course - the ice caps are still melting, most glaciers are still retreating, and sea levels are still rising. Even this year's weird winter weather has been caused by an exceptionally warm Pacific Ocean surface temperatures that may even dwarf past El Ninos (El Nino, recall, is the term given the warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean every few years, which causes a shift in winter weather to the south - explaining why Mississippi is getting snowed on while Vancouver is not). The study merely points out that temperature records alone aren't a reliable indicator of global climate change. To me, it calls into question the projection of the severity of the warming effect, not necessarily the existence of the effect itself. Will the earth really warm by 5 degrees C in the next few decades?

None of this makes the pursuit of alternative energy sources a bad idea - the reasons for alternative energy go well beyond global warming.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."

There's even a $5 filing fee.

By "subversive organization," the law means "every corporation, society, association, camp, group, bund, political party, assembly, body or organization, composed of two or more persons, which directly or indirectly advocates, advises, teaches or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States [or] of this State."

This would be hilarious if it didn't sound so McCarthyish. What, exactly, does "controlling" the government of the United States entail? Isn't that what political parties do? I understand the law's intent, but one wonders how easily it might be misinterpreted.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Someone should call up Gerard Alexander and ask if he wants a little cheese with his whine. The poor dear, he doesn't like it when liberals act like they're right and conservatives are wrong. Gosh, you kinda feel sorry for him, always being wrong all the time and then getting called on it.

This is me being condescending, by the way. Just in case your tiny conservative brain didn't process that.

One wonders if Mr. Alexander has ever listened to Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. They've done pretty much anything he accuses liberals of doing, but apparently, Mr. Alexander thinks that they're right and therefore not "condescending" at all. Anyway, let's look at Mr. Alexander's "critique" of liberal condescension and see what we can see:

But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.

Wait, wait, wait, you're saying that liberals think that they're using logic to reach a conclusion, and that people who don't reach that conclusion must be using faulty logic? Good heavens, what would happen if we all tried to use logic to come to conclusions? Why, the world would end! I assume, by Alexander's association of logic and reason with "condescension," that he thinks conservatives don't use logic then?

Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." During the 1950s and '60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement. Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival. In 1962, Richard Hofstadter referred to "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

Pardon me, but is any of this false? Right-wing politics in the '50s and '60s did, in fact, make political hay out of paranoia and intolerance, or do I really need to remind you of Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society? To a right-winger, the world really was made up of a Manichean "good" and "evil" - and still is, really, as anyone who follows modern conservative thought could tell you. Conservatives shouldn't be insulted by factual portrayals of their positions. Rather, if conservatives think that the world is split into clear "good" and "evil" camps, they ought to own it rather than call such a description condescending. And if conservatives don't believe that, they should tell us why that's wrong, but remember - being wrong isn't the same as being condescending.

The first is the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a narrative made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush's presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational factors.

But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. This is the second variety of liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on "guns, God and gays" instead of economic redistribution.

OK, this is a good point. Frank's book doesn't take social issues seriously, and so it is kind of condescending. Dean's comment isn't, though - it's acknowledging a fact. Southern white voters tend to care more about social issues than about asking the government to help them out. But it's the Democrats' job to convince these voters that Democratic policies can help them, and that liberal social policies won't hurt them at all. Doing this isn't condescending - it's good politics, just like Republicans trying to convince the same voters of the opposite. In fact, it's the entire friggin' point of politics.

In his 2008 book, "Nixonland," progressive writer Rick Perlstein argued that Richard Nixon created an enduring Republican strategy of mobilizing the ethnic and other resentments of some Americans against others. Similarly, in their 1992 book, "Chain Reaction," Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall argued that Nixon and Reagan talked up crime control, low taxes and welfare reform to cloak racial animus and help make it mainstream. It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.

Again, is there anything here that's false? Nixon and other Republicans did use racism to win elections - no less a conservative leader than former RNC chair Ken Mehlman has said as much. And anyone familiar with Jesse Helms' "white hands" ad can say that racial politics survived at least into the '90s. Of course, it's a little rich to say that liberals are condescending when they say conservatives used to be racist when conservatives are accusing Obama of the same damn thing.

Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the influential progressive Web site Daily Kos, commissioned a poll, which he released this month, designed to show how many rank-and-file Republicans hold odd or conspiratorial beliefs -- including 23 percent who purportedly believe that their states should secede from the Union. Moulitsas concluded that Republicans are "divorced from reality" and that the results show why "it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country." His condescension is superlative: Of the respondents who favored secession, he wonders, "Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumb-[expletive]-istan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?"

I have my own issues about that poll. But let's put ourselves in Markos' shoes and take the poll at its word here. You're criticizing him for saying that a good number of Republicans are divorced from reality when he's discussing a poll that shows that significant numbers of Republicans think he wasn't born in the US, that ACORN stole the 2008 election, and that he wants the terrorists to win? Those positions are objectively and demonstrably false. The act of holding beliefs that are objectively untrue is the very definition of being divorced from reality. Criticize the poll, but don't call it condescending. Call it a poorly constructed poll.

These four liberal narratives not only justify the dismissal of conservative thinking as biased or irrelevant -- they insist on it. By no means do all liberals adhere to them, but they are mainstream in left-of-center thinking. Indeed, when the president met with House Republicans in Baltimore recently, he assured them that he considers their ideas, but he then rejected their motives in virtually the same breath.

This is, perhaps, the most telling part of Alexander's column. According to him, it's condescending to tell someone they're wrong. Does Alexander think that all criticism is condescension? Well, it's not. It's criticism. I don't accuse you of condescension when you tell me my beliefs are wrong. Disagreement and criticism is healthy in a political debate - hell, that's what makes it a debate!

Alexander goes on to criticize Jon Stewart, which is equally telling. Stewart serves two roles - calling bullshit, and making fun of people. Is making fun of people condescending? Perhaps, but it's hardly toxic to our political debate. Indeed, when Stewart makes fun of conservative viewpoints he's generally good about including in those jokes why, exactly, Stewart finds those positions worthy of derision. One wonders why conservatives, instead of complaining, don't try to give as good as they get. And conservatives call us humorless? Puh-leez.

Alexander goes on to talk about how previously marginalized conservative ideas turned out to be good ideas, to which I might add previously marginalized liberal ideas like racial equality and a 40-hour work week. But see, we liberals criticize ideas because we think that they're wrong. Conservatives do the same thing, too. It's called the political debate. Sometimes it gets a little unsubstantive, and sometimes - yes - it starts to seem condescending. But we condescend because we think you're wrong. Guess what, Mr. Alexander? So do you. What you call "condescension" is really criticism, and when you blame liberals, you really ought to be blaming yourself for having such a thin skin.

Anyway. If it's real, honest-to-God pointless condescension you seek, Mr. Alexander, just read the first two paragraphs of this post. Otherwise, allow for the fact that people are allowed to tell you that you're wrong and make fun of you, and that this is okay and natural and part of a healthy society. And that when you accuse liberals of something, chances are conservatives are just as guilty of it.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Those of you who know me know that I've been involved for the past year or so with a group called Historic Green, which does some historic preservation/green building work to help restore the Lower 9th Ward area of New Orleans post-Katrina. This year we're doing a lot of interesting projects, but the one I'm working on is some playground restoration. We're repairing some of the play structure and hoping to add ground cover and solar-powered lighting to the playground this year. We're eligible for a $5000 grant from the Brighter Planet foundation, but we need your votes to get it.

So click here, register and vote. You can vote three times. As they say in Chicago, vote early and often!

A lot has been made on the blogosphere and Twitterverse recently about a Research 2000 poll commissioned by Big Orange that polls registered, self-identified Republicans and finds that they're, well, batshit insane. Some of the poll highlights:

Only 8% - that's eight percent - believe that gay and lesbian people should be allowed to teach in the public schools. 19% were not sure; 73% said no.

That's some serious crazy... but color me skeptical. Let's take a look at the "don't ask, don't tell" question, since that's in the news nowadays. The R2K poll has Republican support for allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military at a mere 26%, with 19% not sure and 55% opposed. Problem is, there's a Gallup poll from June that asks the exact same question. The result? Support for allowing openly gay soldiers is at 58% - 32 points higher than in the R2K poll. Even if we account for the fact that Gallup pushes fence-sitters, and we place all those fence-sitters in with the open-service supporters, we get 45% support - 13 points less than Gallup's number, still nothing to sneeze at. What's more, the questions asked were semantically equivalent. Something, somewhere, is horribly wrong.

There are a couple of options. One is that support for gays in the military has tanked between June and now. I find that highly unlikely - the Gallup poll had a trend among Republicans of +6 over the past four years, and even during the recent debate on the subject top military brass - who carry a lot of weight with Republicans - have been almost unanimous in supporting repeal of the DADT policy.

Another is that R2K's poll oversampled cranky old people, which it did - 37% of R2K's sample were over 65. R2K gave us crosstabs by age group, though, and the 18-29-year-olds sampled by R2K gave their support at 31% with 22% fence-sitting - that's 53% maximum support for open service. That 53% number is still below Gallup's number for all Republicans, and 18-29s are among the most likely groups to support allowing LGBT folk to serve openly.

One intriguing option, though, is that questions asked previously by R2K could have triggered a more conservative frame of mind in many respondents. R2K asked their question after they asked several other questions about radical conservative beliefs, including the ACORN question, whether Obama is a socialist or a U.S. citizen, etc. After being asked all these questions, it's easy to imagine that someone would start automatically giving the "conservative" position whether or not they actually agree with that opinion independently. They're not thinking "what do I think" anymore - on a subconscious level, they're thinking, "I'm a conservative, what do conservatives think?" It's a cognitive shortcut that's easy to trigger, and it might explain the discrepancy between the two polls.

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

While we're at it, let's give little Susie Collins a hug too. She looks very, very frightened. Maybe she wants a cookie and some ice cream.

“This is really dangerous nonsense,” McConnell said of the Obama administration’s policies regarding treatment of alleged terrorists. “We have a way to do it, John,” McConnell told CNN’s John King. “Interrogate them. Detain them and try them in military commissions offshore at Guantanamo from which no one has ever escaped.”

Aww, the poor dears! They're so scared of a relatively minor threat that they're whining about the Constitution applying to everyone! Let's give them all cookies and milk and maybe they'll calm down. There, there, little boys and girls, it's gonna be okay.

Goddamn, I wish my country's leaders would quit acting like they have the emotional maturity of a toddler. The Constitution is what it is. You can't make it optional just because you're a little scared. Grow up, people.